On Walls (and on Knocking Them Down)
by Polly Little
Summary: "You're allowed to want things," she'll say, and Prussia will roll his eyes. A routine arguement takes a new turn, and Erzebet discovers and confronts a longheld fear of Gilbert's. Canon verse.


On Walls (and on Knocking Them Down)

Ezrebet is tired. She can feel herself coming to a halt – like a train running out of steam, like an avalanche hitting the ocean, or maybe just like a woman, frustrated and lonely and not caring enough to pretend anything else anymore.

They've had this conversation over and over since around the same time she started wearing dresses, the words exhausting a rut into her tongue until she could speak them in her sleep. Experience tells her nothing will change. Hope says to keep going anyway.

"You're allowed to want things," she'll say, and Prussia will roll his eyes. "Sometimes it's okay to do something just for you."

"I have responsibilities," he'll snap back. "Duties and expectations to meet."

She won't ask him how well that's working out for him. She can see it in the defensive wall of his folded arms, the tired slant of his shoulders. They'll skirt around subjects the way they used to doge past trees, running through a forest somewhere long ago and laughing and shrieking like nothing would happen if they were caught. Like nothing else mattered but the thrum of the ground rising to meet them.

So instead it will be her turn to roll her eyes, dismissive in a way that acknowledges the problem, and change the subject to something, if not neutral, then to something that matters more to human, so the pair of Nations can relax and ignore difficult questions like "is it okay if I hold your hand?"

"Who do you want to be, ten, fifty, a hundred years from now?"

"Do you ever miss the way we used to be?"

But maybe one day she won't. Maybe she'll give up on giving up, and cut straight to the heart of the matter.

"You're allowed to be a person _too_, Gilbert."

And at first he'll think it the wrong thing to say, because his arms will fall and his shoulders will stiffen, and he'll come crashing into her like a wave breaking on the shore. Hungary is a landlocked country. She doesn't know how to handle water metaphors.

But Erzebet is a woman, still. She's not very good at dealing with her gangling beanpole of a best friend collapsing into her because she said the wrong thing, but she has a hunch that if she puts her arms around him? At the very least, it won't make things worse.

So she'll hug him, awkwardly, and that will set something off. "Its okay to do something without justifying it as a Nation thing first. We aren't friends because German companies account for almost a third of foreign investors in Hungarian businesses, are we?"

He wouldn't respond to that, and that will be what clues her in to the problem at the heart of it, because Gilbert doesn't cry because he thinks it makes East Germany look weak. He's arrogant like that, forgets he's more than the sum of his parts.

"Gilbert," she'll sigh, and pretend not to notice the way he'll lean into her more at the simple tenderness the use of a name creates. "We were friends when we were small because we enjoyed hitting each other with sticks. We're friends now because we _still_ enjoy hitting each other with sticks, and also I like dragging you to art museums and buying too many postcards in the gift shop."

He'll laugh there, a little watery and quiet, but still a laugh. She likes his laugh. Its dramatic and obvious and sounds oddly metallic, and it suits him perfectly.

"If I didn't like you, why would I ask you to spend time with me?"

He'll shrug, and she'll be able to see the gears turning between his ears, as Prussia plots out exactly how someone could benefit from this, all plots and manipulation and backstabbing, and she can't even blame him because _sometimes Hungary's exactly the same_.

"Don't answer that," she'll say quickly, already tearing down her mistakes. "If I didn't like you, I would not ask you to spend time with me as much as I do."

This time, she's firm. She'll lead this horse to water, and if it refuses to drink she will attach an IV with the necessary fluid.

"You wouldn't?" Gilbert asks, and it's such a childlike voice he uses that she has to wonder exactly how long they've all been letting this problem fester. Inside of her, a tiny girl with jagged hair and a crooked smile is demanding to know what the point of indoor plumbing and the option not to wear a corset can be, when she can't even let her friends know she loves them. She can ignore that for a little longer.

"No, Gilbert, I wouldn't." When she says that (not if, when, because this conversation is clearly more important than she'd expected), she feels a pair of wiry arms snake around her torso and hold her, tight.

"I haven't," she thinks she should add in a voice that tries for gentler than usual and isn't actually too far off.

She doesn't say, "that would be ridiculous," or "I could never do that," because it isn't and she has. But she has never pretended otherwise, at least.

He pulls away anyway, never comfortable with displays of affection at the best of times. "What makes you think," he says, jaw held tight shut with the immaculate control of a gearbox and eyes cold and flinty, "that I'm not acting exactly as I please?"

Dimly, she remembers his face taking on that look under flickering candlelight more than two centuries ago, and how she had railed at him then for not caring. She thinks she understands now – it's not that he doesn't care, it's that Gilbert, Prussia, East, everything he is doesn't want to care – and she ignores his face and the harsh tone he says them in, and just responds to the words he's saying.

"If you are," Erzebet says, meeting his gaze and refusing to flinch away, "then tell me, now, and I promise I will apologise, and never mention this again."

She doesn't think he is. She doesn't think he will. That only leaves the truth. "But I don't think that's right. I think that if you truly didn't want something you would say so outright. You wouldn't tiptoe around the subject with what you _should_ do and what you're _supposed_ to ignore. You're not that diplomatic."

She doesn't step forward, or reach for his hand. That would defeat the point of the boundary she's promised to respect. But she does speak as slowly and carefully as possible, because this is important. Gilbert is important. "So, Gilbert. What do you want?"

He swallows, pale throat bobbing in a mesmerising line, and she wonders if she's being too harsh. Emotions never really were her strong point.

Then his shoulders square off into the familiar stance he'd take stalking towards her across the battlefield, and he lunges forward, sharp and sudden like a knife in the ribs.

"You," he breathes into her. "I want you."

Gilbert kisses Erzebet, and it tastes like a victory and a relief, and hundreds of years worth of walls coming down all at once.

**A/N: not necessarily a direct sequel, but definitely in conversation with my fic Eavesdropping, and the way Gilbert there used dehumanisation to suppress his emotions.**

**First fix of the decade, and its Hetalia! Its poetic, in a way - this is the series that got me into fandom.**


End file.
